5 Reasons to Save Time & Let the Pros Manage Your WordPress Site

Your website is your corner of the internet. When a potential customer searches Google and lands on your website, it becomes their gateway to discover your brand. Despite the importance of this online real estate, small business owners don’t have time to build a website from front to back. That’s why so many businesses choose WordPress as their content management system. It’s robust enough to offer everything business owners need and without forcing them to build the site from scratch – awesome!

Unfortunately, there’s a lot more to websites than just a one-time set up. The technical side of the site constantly needs to be updated and improved – a project that can take business owners away from other key aspects of running their company. That’s why it’s essential for small businesses to offload the backend maintenance to a professional team. Luckily, this can be taken care of easily (and affordably!) by a WordPress-specific hosting company. In addition to saving small business owners valuable time, these companies also provide five other key benefits that can make you life and website better:

1. Site Speed

We know you’ve heard this before, but page load times are a big deal. If you don’t believe us, feel free to check out this awesome infographic by Kissmetrics. Their findings clearly remind us that website visitors and online shoppers are not patient, and consider it a dealbreaker if a webpage loads for longer than two seconds! To emphasize the point further, Amazon has famously said that for every 1/10 of a second they increased their load time, their sales dropped by 1%.

If you want to make sure your website speed is being kept up to snuff, teams at hosted WordPress companies like Pagely set up each business client with their own Content Delivery Network. This CDN is a group of servers that help your website get delivered to users even more quickly by fetching your website data from the server that’s geographically closest to the user. People who don’t utilize this kind of hosting just have access to one server, so their site doesn’t have the same flexibility.

2. Automatic Backups + WordPress Updates

If you’ve ever managed your own WordPress site, it’s certain that you’ve run into some compatibility issues with the latest version of a plugin; or a bug in a new WordPress release. Rather than struggling through that issue on your own, managed WordPress hosts make sure your site is is always working correctly by testing the site as soon as an upgrade is complete to make sure it’s loading properly. If it’s not, they can simply revert to one of their automatic backups made the previous night, and investigate the problem further. When the site does finally load without any detected problems, you’ll be notified that you’ve been upgraded. There’s no action that’s required from you – all you have to do is wait for an email!

3. Fast, Knowledgeable Support

Speaking of technical difficulties, one of the frustrating things about WordPress is that there’s no one to call when you need help! If you’re lucky the company you purchased your theme from will respond to forum requests quickly, but no one will pick up the phone and walk you through issues. That’s where managed hosting can make all the difference. Many services offer 24/7 support and if they’re WordPress specialists the team can also walk you through issues that aren’t necessarily related to the technical backend.

4. Affordable Price

Although managed hosting is more expensive than standard hosting options, the value your business receives in support and services can be well worth the difference. Pagely starts their small business plans at $64 per month – a price that’s well under the average cost of hiring full time or part time IT staff to help you manage your site on an ongoing basis.

5. Bolstered Security

NSBA 2014

Many small business owners underestimate the value of airtight security because, according to a survey conducted by the National Small Business Association in 2014, 25% don’t know very much about it. Unfortunately, ignorance isn’t bliss.

That’s because the same report also showed that over half the association’s members had experienced a “security breach” of some kind and 39% of those incidents took more than three days to resolve. The worst part though, is that the breach cost each business $20,000 on average. Yikes!

While nothing is 100% hack-proof, Pagely’s PressArmor was made to be one of the most secure WordPress web hosts around. The product is specifically designed to address the security concerns around WordPress, so you can rest easier knowing your site is safe. However if a problem ever does arise, the Pagely will start work on the issue immediately, so you have minimal downtime and damage.

As a small business owner, you don’t have time to learn and implement everything that’s needed to keep your website in tip-top condition. That’s why it’s crucial to find a managed WordPress hosting company that’s an expert in hosting and WordPress. Connecting with a team that can help tackle any problem you throw their way will make sure you’re not bogged down with technical details and your business isn’t held up by website issues.

Have you ever used a managed WordPress hosting service? Let us know about your experience on social or in the comments!

About The Author

Arielle does marketing at Pure Chat, a live chat software for small businesses. As a journalism graduate she loves anything content related - from videos and podcasts to blog posts and infographics. Arielle is passionate about fashion tech, startups and secondhand shopping. Connect with her @ArielleHurst.